Page 18 of Too Lethal to Love

The forces she shouldn’t believe in but stupidly did.

Beth dropped the secure phone Kane gave her this morning into her tote bag as he settled next to her in his pickup truck.

He took off his cowboy hat and tossed it in the back seat. His black leather jacket shifted. The shoulder holster he’d slipped on over his white Henley shirt before they left the house came into view. A bit of tension released from her neck, knowing the gun in her bag had a friend. She prayed they didn’t have cause to play together.

Reaching for the seat belt, she pulled it across her body. It clicked into place along with her gaze on his jean-clad thigh.

The side of Kane’s lips tugged up in a smirk. “In case you’re wondering, yes, it is.”

She snapped her head up. “Huh?”

“My leg. It’s just as spectacular as you’re imagining it.”

Heat crept into her cheeks as her gaze fixed on his dimple. “I wasn’t imagining anything of the sort.” More like imagining what it felt like under her touch. Against her own thighs as he… “I’ve seen Chris’s and Nic’s arms. Iknow what your steel, or super, or whatever you want to call it, looks like.”

And that knowledge gave her plenty of material to work with when she fantasized about what other wonders awaited under his pants.

After she’d said goodbye to Scarlett and Chris last night, she hadn’t argued when Nic and Linc stayed so Kane could go home and pack. As Linc sat on her sofa and watched a football game and Nic helped her clean, she wondered what horrific events had brought the two of them to VIPER. When she’d finally laid her head on her pillow, she wondered the same about Kane. The thought still occupied her mind when she found him in her kitchen this morning with coffee and bagels from her favorite deli.

He took her hand and placed it on his knee. “You have no idea how hard my steel is. Or how super I can be.”

Warmth radiated through his jeans. “I expected it to be cold.” Last night it hadn’t felt cold when it vibrated against her under the table, but she figured that was her own body heat.

“Scarlett worked some sort of magic to make it feel like flesh and blood. It’s all networked with my brain.”

“Can you feel me? I mean my hand?” She pressed the pads of her fingers into his steel as he backed out of the parking spot. The questions—and the contact—felt more personal, more intimate than any encounter she’d ever had with a guy.

“Yes.” He placed his hand over hers. “I can feel the pressure. It’s hard to explain, but I can feel you. Your heat.”

She swallowed a squeak as his leg vibrated beneath her palm. “Can you feel pain?”

He shrugged as he pulled out of her neighborhood and onto the main road. “It’s hard to tell. I feel phantom pain all the time. My brain still thinks I have a biological legattached to my hip, so actual pain and phantom pain are indistinguishable. It mostly aches where my leg is cut off, and the steel is attached. It hurts today. The warmth is helping.”

Knowing she could make him feel better shot heat from the corner of her smile into her cheeks. “So, I’m a human heating pad.”

“Yup. And I’m a human weapon.” He glanced at her and winked. “Looks like we both have superpowers.”

If only her superpower would incinerate the ridiculous notion that she was cursed.

“You okay?” Kane squeezed her knee.

“Yeah.” She pulled her hand away from his steel. The list of things she needed to discuss with him stretched for miles, but she couldn’t help but ask what had been on her mind since the day they’d met. “How did it happen?”

She studied his profile, his jaw moving from side to side as he maneuvered the truck through Saturday morning traffic. The silence, save for honking horns, lingered for what felt like an hour. “Forget it; you don’t have to tell me. It was rude of me to ask.” She didn’t like to talk about her trauma. What made her think he wanted to share his?

He stopped at a light and looked at her. “No. It’s okay. You told me what happened to you. It’s only fair I share my story.”

Guilt settled in her chest. She hadn’t told him everything, only what he needed to know.

He hit the gas as the light turned red. “I was in the Middle East on a routine maneuver when we came upon a mess of IEDs. You’d think theimprovisedin improvised explosive device would mean it was built half-assed, but every device worked perfectly. Too many of my team, men and women with families back home, lost more than a leg.”

An image of Kane as he lay in a fiery field with burningdebris raining down on his broken body had her hand slipping back to his thigh. “I’m so sorry.”

He glanced at her. “I survived. I’m grateful for that, and grateful VIPER offered me a second chance at my military career. I don’t take that for granted.”

“I’m glad you survived.” Clearing the emotion from her throat, she drew her hand away from the impossibly hard steel under his jeans and focused on her own situation. “We need to set some parameters for our pretend relationship.”

He smiled. “Lay it on me, darlin.’”

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